What Kerry did after reporting for duty

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"I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty." It was the most memorable line from John Kerry's acceptance speech last week at the Democratic National Convention. But Kerry's insistence on making his four-month tour of duty in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign could backfire as Americans learn more about what he did in that country and, more importantly, what he did when he returned home.

To hear the Kerry campaign tell it, the men who served with Kerry universally consider him a genuine war hero who would make a fine commander in chief. The campaign trumpets testimonials from a group of fellow officers and sailors who served in Vietnam when Kerry was there and, most memorably, an emotional endorsement from Jim Rassman, the man Kerry saved when he went back to rescue the wounded Green Beret, taking enemy fire as he jumped into the water.

But most of the officers who served with Kerry have not endorsed him and resent their images being used to tout the candidate. In one famous photo, which Kerry has used on his Website and campaign literature, the young Kerry is pictured with 19 other Swift boat officers in charge of Coastal Division 11. But only one of the 23 officers who served with Kerry in Coastal Division 11 has actually endorsed Kerry. Indeed the overwhelming majority of other officers who served in his unit at the time have opposed his candidacy for U.S. president, including every single officer under whom Kerry served in Vietnam. Some of Kerry's fellow officers have formed an organization called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

During the convention, controversy swirled among some veterans over footage used in Kerry's biographical film introducing him to the convention and the nation. Some of it was amateur footage supplied by the candidate himself. The Kerry campaign admits that the candidate lugged an 8mm camera around Vietnam, shooting footage of areas along the Mekong Delta where his boat encountered various attacks, but claims it was common for sailors to do so.

I own a late '60s vintage 8mm camera, which is nothing like today's tiny video cams. It weighs several pounds and is cumbersome to operate. I can't imagine carrying it aboard a boat in dangerous territory in order to shoot travelogues, but apparently Kerry thought the films would come in handy someday. Indeed, he may have planned to use the footage in his run for Congress when he returned from the Vietnam War  before he decided that playing the war hero wouldn't sell as well as playing the war protester in the liberal Massachusetts district in which he chose to run.

But what Kerry did in Vietnam is not the real issue. It's what he did when he came back to the safety of U.S. shores that rankles so many who served this country. John Kerry lied about what he had seen in Vietnam and impugned the integrity of everyone who had served with him. Kerry testified before Congress on April 22, 1971, that his fellow sailors and soldiers had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of Vietnam. ... " A few days later, Kerry went on "Meet the Press" saying that he, personally, had "committed atrocities" in Vietnam, as well as accusing other American servicemen  the men he now refers to as his "band of brothers"  of doing the same.

Kerry doesn't like to talk about these gross fabrications now, hoping that people will remember only the stories of his own heroism, not his attacks on the honor of the men who served with him in Vietnam. But for many of those who remember Kerry's bitter and false statements, he will never be fit to become commander-in-chief.

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JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)